An extreme weather-driven climate crisis generates huge economic damage. Agricultural and livestock production decreases; food is scarce, there is famine, and inequality between social groups is intensifying. All these factors provoke an escalation of tension that can lead to violent conflicts and corruption.
A new United Nations report predicts that environmental changes could drag more than 120 million people into poverty by 2030. A situation in which the rich will pay to escape increased heat, famine and conflict while the rest of the world will suffer.
According to a study led by Stanford University (USA) and published in the journal Nature, the intensification of the climate crisis will increase the future risk of violent armed conflicts within countries.
The study estimates that in a scenario with 4°C higher than average temperature, the impact of climate on conflicts will increase more than five times, with a 26% probability.
Even in a scenario of 2°C warming (the stated goal of the Paris Climate Agreement), the influence of climate on conflicts would more than double, with a probability of 13%.
The study researchers argue intensely about whether climate plays a role in the outbreak of civil wars and other armed conflicts. Climate change and situations resulting from Global Warming are already causing war and conflict in various parts of the planet.
According to the Index of Fragility of States, carried out by the Fund for Peace, in countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya or Somalia, there is a clear link between the consequences of climate change and conflicts between different social groups such as farmers and ranchers. All of them are mainly motivated by droughts, water resources, lack of food or population migration.
In this sense, the United Nations has already warned that climate change may increase the risk of wars for the control of natural resources and has asked countries for more cooperation projects in this area.
“The exploitation of natural resources, or competition for them, can and does lead to violent conflict. Preventing, managing, and solving them is one of the greatest and growing challenges of our time,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council last October.
For this reason, the UN chief has encouraged countries to turn natural resources precisely into an element of cooperation, giving us an example of several projects underway around the world.
Guterres intervened in a Security Council debate on the role that the fight for natural resources has at the beginning of armed conflicts, a session promoted by Bolivia, which this month is chairing the organ.
The Bolivian ambassador, Sacha Llorenti, denounced the frequent struggles for access to oil, gas, water or minerals, and recalled that behind them are usually “multinational corporations or foreign interests”.
Climate Change Is Behind More Displacement Than Wars
Experts believe that the damage that Climate Change causes to ecosystems, and the resulting competition for access to natural resources, may increasingly act as triggers for wars and other conflicts in the future.
The environmental changes caused by global warming will not only affect the conditions under which people should live in each area but may, in turn, generate greater social impact, threatening the infrastructures of society or by inducing social responses that aggravate the problem.
The associated socio-economic and political tension can undermine the functioning of communities, the effectiveness of institutions, and the stability of social structures. These degraded conditions can lead to social unrest, especially in countries where there is a large economic gap between rich and poor, and even degenerate into armed conflict.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, in 2018, there were 17 million new displacements related to natural disasters and the effects of climate change, while another report prepared by the World Bank assures that climate change will expel 140 million people from their homes in the next 30 years.
In a more recent review of studies published in the Annual Review of Economics, researchers concluded that variations in temperature and precipitation patterns systematically increase the risk of conflict.
The writer is a Journalist based in Jammu and Kashmir. He writes about the environment-related issues, Climate Change in South Aisa and is a Media Fellow with NFI India. He can be reached at bwahid32@gmail.com.